Tone Druglitrø: "Experimenting with care and cod: On document-practices, versions of care and fish as the new experimental animal".

Experimenting with care and cod: On document-practices, versions of care and fish as the new experimental animal

How to care for fish is a contested domain; legislation and other tools are increasingly developed to protect fish from pain (Message & Greenhough, 2019). In practice, many uncertainties exist around how to care for fish so that they meet the legal requirements. In this paper we ask: How are existing legal and ethical principles and procedures put to work in cod immunology and animal research? By what document-practices and document-tools are care for cod in research negotiated and settled? How does the cod stand out as an object of care in the life sciences?

Our paper answers these questions by empirically teasing out how scientists navigate the terrain and arguing for the importance of bringing the document-based realities of animal research into analysis. We draw upon ethnographic fieldwork in a novel terrain in the life sciences, that of comparative immunology, investigated through experiments on Atlantic cod (Gadus Morhua). Based upon this empirical terrain, we delineate three different versions (Mol, 1999) of care: procedural care, skilled care, and dispassionate care. In doing this, we also challenge care studies approaches in science and technology studies (STS) that render formal procedures and official and written materials, such as policy documents and medical protocols, unable to address the “specificities of care” (Mol et al., 2010, p. 9) or to do care work.